Sunday, December 14, 2008

I hear tonight that someone, "Rafiki" has noted that TLC was "a temporarily free forum" and that I was only at WD to recruit members.

Does this dummy not think that had I wanted to be sneaky I would not have published that fact publicly?

Yes a non-charging TLC was temporary, but the onset of Writers Dock charging was SONNY's idea. Writers Dock today AFTER I had left, announced they would be charging for membership of TLC. WD brought in charges for new members three months ago and wanted me to charge for TLC at the rate of thirty pounds a month. That was delayed for one reason only; because I told Sonny to wait until TLC members began to score hits and win prizes.

So to clarify. The charging was at the behest of the owner of Writers Dock and it was me who delayed the imposition of the charge.

The ten weeks work, the articles, the stories, the critiques (I have critiqued every single story and flash posted) was completely free.

TLC members have already posted about how much they learned and how disappointed they are.

I repeat I was NOT banned. I left because the situation was impossible.

Over the years Boot Camp has waxed and waned. It gets newcomers, people develop and leave to:

Have a babyStart an MA or MFAWrite a novel

etc

BC has always need around 24 members so that at any time 12-18 are active. We work intensely, brilliantly, successfully.

This last eighteen months I took my eye off the ball while renovating the chapel in Wales and the membership slipped. The place was still working (it still is today) but it felt lifeless.

I was a dormant member at Writers Dock, dormant, because frankly it was a very amateurish place run by amateurs, for amateurs. But there were a few souls there who wanted Writers Dock to be more and they had a new section for critiquing critiques, and that's MY kind of country.

So, as Cheesepuff, a membership I'd had since 2005, I began to post.

As is standard in these cases, certain baboons on certain rocks began to bare their teeth, but Sonny, the owner of the site confided in me that the site was struggling and atrophying and needed something like Boot Camp.

I set up an open forum "Tough Love Central" then a closed group "Tough Love Writing Group 1" and a third forum "Story Week 1", another "Story Follow-up" and a fifth for Flashes.

In just ten weeks we trebled the size of the membership

Below are the statistics. Appreciate this is from scratch in a partly-hostile environment.

00,087 New Flashes (9 per week)00,085 New Stories (9 per week)00,004 New Stories not yet posted00,005 Other Stories

00,181 Total Stories (18 per week)00,975 Total Critiques (incl professional stories) (98 per week)00,616 STORY Critiques (61 per week)00,328 Flash Responses/Crits (33 per week)00,007 Story Full critiques per-story average (7.25)00,004 Crit Responses per Flash average (3.77)

However, when an individual was castigated by a Draconian moderator for using a TLC prompt, I pointed out (not remotely flaming) why the castigation was wrong. The baboons rose up, as they always do. However, reading the various posts in WD you'd be forgiven for imagining that I had sent nasty emails or private messages. I did not. Not one. My privileges as a moderator were removed, so I told Sonny I would be leaving as soon as I had removed my stories, my articles and the Boot Camp grid.

I hear tonight that someone, "Rafiki" has noted that TLC was "a temporarily free forum" and that I was only at WD to recruit members.

Yes it was, but the onset of charges was SONNY's idea. WD brought in charges for new members three months ago and wanted me to charge for TLC at the rate of thirty pounds a month. That was delayed for one reason only; because I told Sonny to wait until TLC members began to score hits and win prizes.

So to clarify. The charging was at the behest of the owner of Writers Dock and it was me who delayed the imposition of the charge.

I've left WD (they blocked my ID immediately and have not allowed me to remove my personal files) and I have not solicited any WD member and suggested they join Boot Camp

Thursday, December 04, 2008

He might rush - another man would rush - dash out for bricks, come back, realise he didn't buy cement, rush out again. What bricks? Does it matter? Do they matter? Just bricks, you know, bricks. A wall is a wall is a wall.

And cement. You need cement, I guess. And you end up with some sort of wall.

No, this man, he thinks. Why a wall? What kind of wall? A wall for shade, or in the shade? Straight, curved, straight and curved? Ornate, or a plain-Joe wall, red-bricked, solid, neat white pointing. What kind of foundations? How deep, how wide, single brick or doubled? Spaces? Ties? What does the wall want? What will the wall say?

Will people look, say, "Nice wall!" or will the wall merely protect, watch backs and small people picnic on fine grass before it? Will they breathe out as the flop before the wall; drop onto blankets, sigh, feeling something is solid here, and the view, the view, the wall behind them, a mother's skirt they don't know they hold?

Brick. Red is usual, but there are many browns, yellows, grey. Or stone, should we think stone? Brick and Stone? Stone & Brick? Are we looking ahead, thinking of sticky-footed ivy, tacked trellises, roses, Russian vines? What shall the wall carry? Does the wall need to look good now (but one day it will be beautiful) or can we have a bare wall, an under-garment, because we know what comes next, a year, two, ten, a century on? If a wall is ugly now, will they leave it to become beautiful? If we make it pretty now, will it last to become beautiful? Is pretty now death for his wall?

Or perhaps he can hide his will-be-beautiful-one-day wall. Make the wall of a house, the house of a street, the street a village (but he knows it's all about his wall). He can laugh, "It's just a wall. A wall is a wall is a wall," and avoid those questions, refuse to talk when people say, but it feels more than just a wall, did you?

He has always been fascinated by walls. Tall red walls round English country gardens, dry walls across Bronteian moors. Neat yellow-bricked and fawn walls in tidy gardens, walls under green, surrounding old orchards, marble walls and steel walls, and walls of ice, even water-walls.

Once he looked at walls without seeing. A wall is a wall is a wall. Then one day - was he in love, was it hot? something was different - he just felt things, felt the way walls were, sensed the way walls are, how walls would be. And he started drawing his walls. To be frank, he drew walls poorly. He sketched, he caricatured, he misrepresented. He painted a little, but he was not an artist. He took photographs, read about walls in books, watched films about walls, listened to the radio, but mostly he just lived with walls, learned how to touch them, sense their breathing, understand where they had come from, rubble and mud, shepherds' bones, clay, chiselled ash, flint, horse-hair.

Now he is ready, a wall calls, a wall waits.

He sits in the sun. If a wall was here, just so, like this, here would be a pleasant spot. He feels a wall coming to him. He is desperate to begin, but he will not rush. He will not even imagine.

Instead, he drinks a little wine. He eats a little cheese. He breaks bread.

And pyramids, temples, Berlin, all float in the air. He sees brethren, ropes and pulleys, a barn flying upright (another burning, screams), and castles battered, undermined, and peace walls and ghetto walls, graffiti, paper, lacquer, hotel walls, a black, shining wall in the Capitol, names, names, names, and he breathes softly, a shepherd, a mason, a joiner, a poet, a man. He nibbles, sips, and then the wall begins to whisper, "I am ready. I will be."

I read an article by Malcolm Gladwell about the time it takes to be very good at anything (10,000 Hours) and that tied in with my beliefs about the sheer VOLUME we have to produce to gain mastery of our writing.

Beginners and intermediates take a lot of convincing over this. I say quantity begets quality but so much of “common-knowledge” suggests the opposite.

Anyway, I had to buy Gladwell’s book, even though we’re broke and I picked up his book “Blink” which is just as good a read. In Blink, Gladwell talks about instant decision-making and how it works, why it’s often brilliantly effective. But in there is much more including how easy it is to change people’s moods AND behaviour merely by salting a conversation with key words. That was, frankly, a bit scary, as was the tests that can show, even for those of us who believe race and colour is irrelevant, just what in-built biases we have.

These books are really excellent, great reads, stimulating, but also, VERY important for serious writers.

About Me

I'm a full-time writer and teacher of creative writing.
I gave up the day job in 1992 and struck a three-book deal a year later.
Published 5 crime novels 1994-1997 then switched to writing serious short fiction.
I run an internet writing school known as Boot Camp, which is direct and honest and expects hard work.
While in Boot Camp, Boot Campers have won 131 First Prizes, many more after they have left.
Boot Campers and ex-Boot Campers have published or are about to publish 20 Novels and 7 short-story collections.
Six Boot Campers have become editors of journals. Two have earned MA with Distinction in Creative Writing
I tell the truth about writers and writing, which regularly gets me banned from writing sites.
My pet hates are those sites where beginning writers lie to each other about how wonderful their work is. Three years later the writing is basically the same and the praise is even higher. What's missing is genuine growth and worthwhile publications.
Favourite short stories are "A Silver Dish" by Saul Bellow, "The Ledge" by Lawrence Sargeant Hall, "The 27th Man" by Nathan Englander